News & Commentary

Rohit Rajan is a summer intern at the ACLU's West Michigan office. A rising second-year law student at Harvard Law School, Rohit says his journey into civil-rights activism started in high school while doing research, and he expects it continue for many years to come.

Meet Jessica Lewis, a rising 3L at Harvard Law School and current ACLU of Michigan summer law intern.  

Like a coroner conducting an autopsy, economist and Wayne State University Law School professor Peter J. Hammer recently performed a highly detailed dissection of the Flint water crisis, laying bare the various pathologies that led to the poisoning of Flint's water supply.

Slave patrols were committees of white men established to monitor, track, capture and torture enslaved Africans. Eventually, these groups supplanted local sheriffs and constables as the primary law enforcers, and they became what we now know as police departments. It is perhaps impossible to count the number of African and African-descended people who have died at the hands of slave patrols and police since the slave era. What we do know is that in the aftermath of each highly publicized act of police brutality, there are many who sing the refrain of a popular song in this country.

The City of Detroit had the wrong man, and Walter Hicks knew it.

Meet Lakyrra Magee, a Social Theory & Practice and Women Studies dual major at the University of Michigan. Lakyrra is one of the ACLU of Michigan’s undergrad interns for the summer of 2016.

Although it has received scant media attention, a lawsuit filed in late June by members of Detroit’s school board, activists and parents could undo the controversial education system Gov. Rick Snyder and the Michigan Legislature have created for the city.

ACLU at the Michigan Capitol – The Week of July 11, 2016

DETROIT –A federal judge today signaled that the first federal safe drinking water case on the Flint water crisis could proceed over protests from the City of Flint and Michigan state officials.